NFL: 'We Want To Protect The Integrity Of Our Brutal, Inhuman Game'

NEW YORK—After reaching an agreement with the NFL Referees Association to end the four-month lockout, league commissioner Roger Goodell announced Thursday that he is committed to maintaining the integrity of the violent and completely barbaric sport of professional football.

“One of my most important responsibilities as commissioner is assuring the stellar reputation of this savage, absolutely horrific game,” Goodell said at a press conference in the NFL’s Manhattan headquarters. “This is something I take very seriously, and all of us are dedicated to protecting the high character of a sport that can leave players physically crippled and utterly mentally incapacitated for the rest of their short, miserable lives.”

“We have a time-honored tradition of giving our fans an enjoyable and entertaining product in which unbelievable athletic specimens violently crash into each other as hard as they can, ultimately cutting the life expectancies of these players in half and destroying any glimmer of hope that they might lead a normal life past the age of 40,” Goodell added. “And I will not stand for anything less.”

Calling football one of the country’s “most revered pastimes,” Goodell told reporters that the NFL will continue to do everything in its power to uphold its proud heritage of forcing 6-foot-plus, 200-to-350-pound men in peak physical condition to repeatedly slam headfirst into each other at unbelievable velocities until their battered bodies completely break down, at which point they are forced to retire and suffer from chronic, lifelong pain.

“Obviously, player safety is also one of our biggest concerns,” said Goodell, adding that the league is constantly reviewing possible rule changes that would help protect the athletes who incur severe brain damage on a weekly basis and have a suicide rate six times higher than the national average. “Ultimately, there’s nothing more important than making sure our players are healthy, stable, and socially upstanding individuals who will soon be subjected to enduring an additional two games of this brutal and inhumane punishment every season in order to help further grow the game.”

Goodell stressed that as long as he serves as commissioner, the league would be ruthless in defending the lofty values of a sport so unrelenting and sadistic that players are regularly knocked completely unconscious during games. Goodell also assured the millions of NFL fans around the world that he is uncompromising in preserving the public confidence in a league whose athletes, after undergoing years of merciless assaults on their bodies, inevitably sink into heavy depression, isolate themselves from family and friends, and in many cases, ultimately decide to take their own lives as a last-ditch effort to escape the daily torture of frequent migraines, short-term memory loss, insomnia, severe depression, and constant joint pain.

“We will never risk or take for granted the trust and loyalty of our fans who clamor to their televisions every Sunday to watch grown men batter the ever-living shit out of each other for their own selfish entertainment,” said Goodell. “If it wasn’t for these bloodthirsty savages who actually cheer at the sight of a fellow human being enduring what is tantamount to severe physical torture, then none of us would even be here.”